The Best Micro-USB Cable

If I were to buy an extra Micro-USB cable or replace a broken one, I’d choose Anker’s PowerLine Micro USB (3ft), because it hits all the right notes in terms of design, functionality, and price. We can’t test every cable, but we’ve tested dozens of Micro-USB cables over hundreds of hours and compared the PowerLine against our previous picks, and Anker’s cable is easy to recommend.

Last Updated:
One month ago

Our electrical engineer dissected Anker’s current lineup of Micro-USB cables and found them to be so similar inside that we still recommend going with the standard PowerLine model, as it’s the least expensive. The PowerLine+ is a good choice if you want a fabric-wrapped cable, but it doesn’t necessarily offer better construction.

One year ago: The 3-foot Anker PowerLine Micro USB is our new top pick, along with the company’s shorter (1-foot) and longer (6- and 10-foot) variations. These inexpensive cables are sturdy and durable, and they let you charge and sync at the fastest speeds.

Two years ago:
We added information about the advantages of PortaPow's charge-only cables when charging directly from a computer. See below for more.

Two years ago:
We’ve added Anker’s Premium Micro USB Cable as an alternative pick. It transfers data and charges at top 2.0 speeds, it’s inexpensive, and it doesn’t have the bulky ferrite core of the Monoprice cable. (We haven’t had the opportunity to tear it down yet, so we can’t yet vouch for its internals.) We’ve also added some more information about USB-C in the What to Look Forward to section.

Three years ago:
After 35 hours of research and tests with a former NASA electrical engineer, we recommend the $4 Monoprice 3-foot USB 2.0 Cable with Ferrite Core. It’s the least expensive cable we tested and also has some of the best internal components (as does our runner-up cable). It charged power-hungry devices at full speed, something not every cable we tested could do.

Anker’s PowerLine cables charge Micro-USB accessories and devices at their maximum speed.1 The cables also address the number one request of our readers: durability. Anker builds its PowerLine cables with Kevlar fiber and PVC strain-relief collars that should prevent fraying during normal use. The cables are also affordable, with even the most-expensive model—the 10-foot length—priced at less than $10. Add Anker’s solid reputation for hardware quality, the company’s well-regarded customer service, and an impressive 18-month warranty, and you can see why this cable is our pick.

This more-expensive cable has the same interior components, but a possibly sturdier, fabric-wrapped exterior.

If you like the appearance and possible—but not guaranteed—extra durability of a nylon-wrapped cable, spend a few dollars more and choose Anker’s PowerLine+ MicroUSB. Our teardown revealed the interior construction to be the same as our pick’s, and it has the same 18-month warranty, but Anker says it’ll withstand twice as many bends, and it includes a carrying pouch for travel.

Table of contents

Why you should trust me

From March 2011 to July 2014, I was the accessories editor at iLounge. During my tenure I reviewed more than 1,000 products, including dozens upon dozens of cables. Some were great, and others literally fell apart in my hands. While at The Wirecutter, I’ve tested more than 100 additional cables, gaining solid insight into what to look for in a good cable.

How we picked

You’ll find hundreds of different Micro-USB cables for sale, and for good reason: With the exception of Apple products (which use Lightning-to-USB cables), almost every modern portable device charges with a cable that has a standard USB Type-A plug on one side and a USB 2.0 Micro-B connector on the other. Many portable hard drives also use such a cable, for both power and data transfers. (Some recent smartphones use USB-C, but they’re few and far between. A few devices still use USB 3.0 Micro-B plugs, but that connector has all but disappeared from phones and tablets.) Not sure which plugs are which? Here’s a great illustrated reference.

For the previous version of this guide, we sent more than 30 cables to a former NASA engineer, who tore them apart to examine their internals; we also tested each cable’s charging and data-transfer rates. But in that testing and over the months and years that we’ve been using those cables for long-term testing, we found no real differences, in charging or data-transfer performance, between our top picks and other good models. As long as a cable was properly constructed—and most models from known, reputable vendors are—it worked great.

What we did notice was if the cables started to come apart over extended use. And reader comments, along with customer reviews on sites such as Amazon.com, indicate that the biggest complaint about cables is that they eventually break, especially if you aren’t careful in how you plug and unplug them.

Because of these experiences and test results, we’re no longer testing dozens of cables—as I mentioned above, the good ones all test similarly, and even if they didn’t, we’d never be able to test enough of them to say, conclusively, which one is the “best.” In addition, cables are a commodity product, and even well-known companies such as Monoprice and Amazon routinely discontinue cables and replace them with different models, or silently change construction or components.

Instead, for this update we looked for cables that let you transfer data and charge devices as quickly as possible, come from a reputable company at the right price, and have proven to be durable in long-term testing. No cable will last forever, but we’re confident that our pick will last as long as anything else you can get at a reasonable price.

In other words, these are the cables we’d buy ourselves. If you find something that better meets your personal criteria, that’s terrific! Our pick is simply a great option that we don’t hesitate to recommend.

Our pick

A sturdy build is part of what makes Anker’s PowerLine cable particularly appealing.

Anker’s PowerLine cables are fast, sturdy, and inexpensive, plus they come with a great warranty.

Anker’s PowerLine Micro USB (3ft) offers everything we look for in a cable at a great price: It can charge every Micro-USB–equipped device at full speed, it transfers data as rapidly as any other good cable, the cable is built to be sturdy, and Anker stands behind its products better than most companies do.

Most Micro-USB cables look similar, but when you examine the PowerLine, its benefits become apparent. The most evident is the sturdy housing around both USB connectors: Each has a hard-plastic casing holding the plug, with a slightly more flexible material covering the connection between the plug and the cable. Anker says the cable itself is “reinforced with bulletproof Kevlar fiber,” but we’ll have to take the company’s word for that.

Similarly, Anker says the PowerLine cable is designed for a lifespan of more than 10,000 bends—double that of the company’s Lightning-to-USB cables, and 10 times longer than that of a typical USB cable. We haven’t bent the cable that many times to test the claim, but overall we find this cable to be one of the best-constructed designs we’ve tested that don’t cost an obscene amount—an over-engineered, “super-tough” cable that goes way beyond Anker’s design is likely overkill and and will cost you quite a bit more. Compared with some of our previous picks from Monoprice and AmazonBasics, the PowerLine cables look and feel sturdier, especially at the cable/plug-connection points. We of course plan to monitor long-term durability.

With many cables, the plug housing can be too large to fit in the port openings in some cases. Anker’s cables have ranked among the best in case compatibility, and the PowerLine cables are no exception: We tested them with several cases that have notoriously tight port openings, and the cables fit fine.

We verified the PowerLine’s charging speed by plugging it into a USB power monitor attached to Apple’s 12W USB Power Adapter and connecting the other end to a Samsung Galaxy S5, which can draw a maximum of 1.8 amps of current. The power monitor consistently showed draw of about 1.75 amps—the figure is never exactly 1.8 amps due to electrical resistance and rounding—which is consistent with what we’ve found with other good cables.

Countless accessories use Micro-USB cables for both charging and data transfer.

We also tested data-transfer speeds by using a PowerLine cable to connect an external Elgato Thunderbolt Drive+ SSD (which has both Micro-USB and Thunderbolt connections) to a 2015 13-inch MacBook Pro and measuring data throughput. The AJA System Test utility showed read and write speeds of approximately 41 megabytes per second, speeds that were within 1 MB/s of the rates for the fastest cables in our previous round of testing. That’s close enough that we can likely attribute the differences in the results to differences in our testing setup between the previous round and this one. And more important, it’s close enough that you’ll never notice the difference in real-world use.

Anker reinforces both of the PowerLine cable’s plugs to prevent fraying.

Anker provides an 18-month warranty on its cables, and in our experience as customers—reinforced by comments we’ve received from readers—the company has a great customer service department. Anker generally replaces broken goods without hassle as long as a problem occurs within the warranty period.

Few publications review cables, but Anker’s popularity means it has a huge number of reviews on Amazon. With nearly 600 reviews at the time of this writing, the PowerLine Micro USB has a 4.7-star rating out of five, and FakeSpot says the reviews can be trusted.

Long-term test notes

We’ve been using Anker’s PowerLine cables daily for the past six months, and they remain our top pick. We’ve seen no physical damage or wear to the cables, and they’ve continued to work just as well as on day one.

Shorter cables can come in handy in a variety of circumstances—sometimes you just don’t need 3 feet of slack. For example, when you’re traveling, weight and space are important considerations, and a shorter cable means a lighter and less-cluttered bag. We also like short versions at a desk, where a USB port is likely close by and extra cable length merely adds to a messy desktop. Anker’s PowerLine cable comes in a 1-foot version that fits these situations well. It actually measures about 11½ inches from tip to tip, but it’s otherwise identical to our top pick.

Long cables can be useful when you want to use your phone while it’s charging, or to keep your tablet on your nightstand when the nearest outlet is a good distance away. The PowerLine cable is available in 6-foot and 10-foot configurations, as well.

If you know you’ll need a few cables to use with multiple devices or to supply your family’s ever-growing cable needs, Anker’s Micro-USB multipacks are a great deal. You can purchase various configurations of three to six cables, with different combinations of lengths.

The standard PowerLine Micro-USB is the right cable for most people, but if you find yourself wanting the different appearance and possible—but not guaranteed—extra durability of a nylon-wrapped cable, we recommend Anker’s PowerLine+ MicroUSB cable. Inside, these cables are essentially the same. The PowerLine+ does have three ground wires, compared with the PowerLine’s one, but our electrical engineer says that though the extra ground wires could theoretically provide better EMI insulation, you’re unlikely to see a real-world difference. It’s the outside that’s the big difference, as the PowerLine+ is wrapped in nylon. Anker claims that the PowerLine+ will withstand 10,000 bends, compared with the standard PowerLine’s 5,000. Micro-USB cables are such a commodity item that we don’t think most people should spend the additional money, but the PowerLine+ is a good cable if you want to spend more for its differences.

Like the standard PowerLine, the PowerLine+ is available in the standard 3-foot length, as well as 1-foot, 6-foot, and 10-foot versions.

Prolonging the life of your cables

A bit of care can prolong the life of any cable. Most important, when you’re unplugging a cable from a USB port or charger, always grasp the plug housing rather than the cable. Doing so reduces the stress on the area where the cable and the plug meet—a spot prone to damage. We also recommend loosely wrapping cables, rather than folding or otherwise aggressively bending them, when you aren’t using them. The Velcro strap that Anker includes with each PowerLine cable is great for this, as the strap allows a loosely coiled cable to hold its shape for compact storage.

The proper way to unplug a USB cable.

(Photos by Michael Hession.)

Footnotes:

1. We haven’t yet tested Micro-USB cables for QuickCharge charging speeds, because devices that use the standard are still fairly rare. We’ll be testing QuickCharge compatibility for a future update. Jump back.

Nick Guy is the accessories writer for The Wirecutter, and covers barware and drinking accessories for The Sweethome. He previously served as accessories editor at iLounge, and wrote about cocktails for Serious Eats. His work has appeared on TIME.com, Fast Company, and Tested.com.

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